| Instructional design competence affects not only teaching effectiveness and the quality of education,but also the effectiveness of the current curriculum reform.Existing research mainly studies the situations of in-service teachers’ instructional design competence at a fixed time.The topic of how pre-service teachers change their instructional design competence over time is under-explored.Meanwhile,the influencing factors of the changes have not received due attention.The purpose of this study is to investigate the changes of pre-service English teachers’instructional design competence and the factors influencing the changes.The participants are 39 students in a Masters of English Education program in a comprehensive university.Data sources include a questionnaire,interviews and case documents.Through descriptive statistics and paired-samples T-test of the quantitative data and content analysis of the qualitative data,two findings are listed as follows.Firstly,the overall instructional design competence of pre-service English teachers has significantly increased.Its mean increases by 0.36 from 3.19 to 3.55.Then,seven components of instructional design competence are ranked according to the increases of their means:ability to analyze and design teaching objectives>ability to design teaching procedures>ability to select and apply teaching media>ability to analyze teaching contents>ability to design teaching evaluation>ability to select and apply teaching strategies>ability to analyze learners.Among the seven components,ability to analyze and design teaching objectives increases the most while ability to analyze learners increases the least.Secondly,the changes of pre-service English teachers’instructional design competence is found to be influenced by both internal and external factors.Internal factors include experience,teacher beliefs,motivation and self-efficacy and self-reflection,and external factors include peers and teachers,school resources and social pressure.As for internal factors,pre-service English teachers’ experience equips them with some pedagogical knowledge,familiarizes them with learners’ characteristics,cultivates their ability to choose and apply teaching media and offers them chances to put theory into practice.In addition,beliefs about learners and about teaching and learning guide them to design,display and adjust their instructional design according to learners’ characteristics and theories of language learning.Meanwhile,motivation and self-efficacy urge them to exert their agency to learn from different resources.Last but not least,through self-reflection,pre-service English teachers discover their pros and cons and seek solutions before,during and after their micro-teaching practice.These all promote the development of their instructional design competence.Among external factors,peers and teachers play the most significant role in developing pre-service English teachers’ instructional design competence.Besides,school resources,such as related courses and other activities,help promote their instructional design competence.However,such resources seem limited.Finally,social pressure,such as employment pressure and peer pressure,stimulates pre-service English teachers’ external motivation.Faced with fierce competition in the job market,they are unwilling to fall behind or be eliminated,which indirectly drives them to improve their instructional design competence.Based on the findings,implications are summarized as follows.As for pre-service English teachers,they are expected to conduct reflection in different forms,try every means to accumulate experience,underscore the central role of learners and guide themselves with constructivism.As for teacher educators,they are suggested to provide pre-service English teachers with specific theoretical guidance,chances for practice,timely feedback and opportunities to interact.Moreover,competition can be created to keep them motivated.Last but not least,teacher educators can urge schools to enrich resources. |
